In the cold half-light of the early morning, Jun Li sat in the moist leaves of the yard, performing her Qi Circulation exercises to quickly clear the drowsiness of waking up.

  Once lucid, Jun Li stood up and looked to her palm. First, she pushed Qi into the Meridians at the back of her hand to form a base. After, she circulated Qi into the center of her hand, forming a loop that circled her palm.

  Finally, as she maintained both patterns of Qi, Jun Li flooded the front of her palm with as much Qi as she could.

  As the stream of Qi flowed into her hand, the spiral in the center of her hand quickly forced the stream to divert, seeping harmlessly through Jun Li’s Meridians and out of her body.

  Observing the result of her training, Jun Li saw the Qi rise from her hand, holding the shape of her palm and rising slightly off her hand. This emanation of Qi, though not particularly solid, churned and roiled with great force.

  Maintaining the Technique, Jun Li stepped forward and thrust her hand out towards her training dummy. When nothing happened, Jun Li closed her eyes and let out a sigh.

  This Technique was, in theory, supposed to be a projectile, firing a solid projection of the user’s palm. ‘I still can’t get it to work… Oh well, at least it’s not useless, even in its current state.’

  Taking a lunging step forward, Jun Li directly slammed her palm into the training dummy, forcing the roiling Qi into the dummy with brute force.

  As Jun Li pressed the Technique into the dummy, the manifestation of Qi quickly deformed and ruptured, forcing her hand and the training dummy away from each other.

  Looking at the metal training dummy, Jun Li saw the strike had left warped ripples in the surface. Even if her palm hurt a bit, and even if it wasn’t what the Technique was supposed to do, Jun Li still felt satisfied with the result.

  It had been just over a week since she had entered the sect, and Jun Li had surprised herself with how quickly her Cultivation had progressed.

  Not only had she learned some of the Sect’s Techniques, but her Cultivation base had been significantly bolstered by her new Cultivation Method, and she now had a far greater volume of Qi, enough to repeatedly use her new Techniques without strain.

  Looking inward, the pond of Qi that manifested in her Dantian was now on the verge of overflowing and was quite unable to take in any more Qi, as Jun Li had discovered last night during her Cultivation.

  What few wisps of cloudy Qi Jun Li had attracted now sat unrefined in her Dantian, unable to mix with the waters. Though it was an uncomfortable feeling, Jun Li knew it was a good sign.

  Even if Jun Li hadn’t read the Glass Cloud Manual, her inherited memories would have allowed her to understand this phenomenon with great clarity.

  She had hit a bottleneck, a stage of Cultivation in which expanding the volume of Qi inside the body becomes nearly impossible.

  According to the Glass Cloud Manual, each greater realm of cultivation had four bottlenecks, separating four lesser stages.

  Being a beginner to Cultivation, Jun Li was at the “Early Qi Condensation” stage, which would, in theory, be followed by the ‘Middle,’ ‘Late,’ and ‘Peak’ stages as her Cultivation progressed.

  Now that Jun Li’s Cultivation had reached the first bottleneck, she needed to break through it. 'It shouldn’t be hard, it’s only the first bottleneck.’ Jun Li reassured herself and sat down to Cultivate.

  As she still had unrefined Qi from the night before, she skipped directly to refining it, even if she wasn’t able to the night before.

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  As had become routine for her, she began to compress the Qi in her Dantian into a sphere, collecting all the aspects it had taken on, the water, waves, and clouds, and forcing it into a single mass of Internal Qi, before releasing and dispersing it through the body.

  Even after repeating the process multiple times, the wisps of unrefined Qi refused to be fully refined into her Dantian.

  Frustrated, Jun Li repeated the process, this time compressing the sphere further than before, with as much strength as she could muster. Oddly, when she released the pressure this time, the sphere did not decompress, and instead sank in her Dantian as a dense mass.

  Though the sight surprised Jun Li, she had hope that it was progress, and considered her next step. Before she could consider her options, however, she began to feel lightheaded to the point of being unable to sit straight.

  Swaying unsteadily, Jun Li quickly realized that compressing the entirety of her Qi, her vital energy itself, into an inert sphere was a sure way to kill herself.

  Staving off panic as best she could, Jun Li quickly tried to remedy the situation. For a moment, she tried to forcibly decompress the sphere in her Dantian, but after feeling an unnatural amount of resistance, Jun Li quickly decided against that course of action.

  Though her mind was racing and her breath slipped from her lungs, she sensed something different about the compressed sphere.

  Unlike in her usual Cultivation, it had not formed a single, even mass. Instead, she could sense this sphere wasn't evenly solidified, Qi flowed freely inside, and only the exterior was solid. Focusing, Jun Li applied more and more pressure onto the sphere, hoping to break through and release the Qi inside.

  With the last of her quickly fading consciousness, unable to take in even a shallow breath, Jun Li saw the sphere begin to crack, streams of vapor escaping as the cracks spread further.

  As the shell began to crumble apart and a semblance of vigor returned to her body, Jun Li began to black out from the strain, barely even able to curse the technique that led her to her predicament. ‘This Cultivation Method is trash… I need to replace it before it gets me killed…’

  . . . . . .

  Unsure if seconds or hours had passed, Jun Li shot up off the ground, unsteadily rising to her feet.

  As she stood up, unsteady though it was, the ease of the movement surprised her, and she felt abnormally light. Looking inwards, the pond of Qi that resided in her Dantian had disappeared, seemingly replaced by a vast cloud of vapor.

  Strangely, Jun Li could tell that the interior of her Dantian had become much larger, even though neither its position nor scale within her body had changed.

  What had been a small space, barely able to contain a small pond, had now become a large field, with more than enough space to hold the vaporous cloud her Internal Qi had now taken the form of.

  Somewhat befuddled by how drastically the shape of her Internal Qi had changed, Jun Li tested it by attempting her new Technique.

  The moment she pulled the Qi from her Dantian, it shot down her arm at a speed incomparable to before, filling her Meridians without strain or delay. Surprised, Jun Li continued, and as she activated her Technique, the results were immediately different.

  Whereas before the Technique manifested as a thin emission of roiling Qi in front of Jun Li’s hand, it now manifested as a thick, vigorously twisting cloud of Qi, with sharp streaks of watery Qi flickering through the cloud at a frightful speed.

  Although the Technique still didn’t separate from her body as a projectile, Jun Li was still happy, considering it a great improvement.

  Dismissing her Technique, Jun Li paused for a moment, having almost forgotten why she passed out. ‘That damn Cultivation Method… Compressing and decompressing every bit of Qi in your body to refine each and every bit of External Qi is the most boneheaded shit in the world.’

  Realizing the absurdity of what she had willingly subjected herself to, Jun Li truly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  Because of the differences between Daoist Cultivation and Martial Cultivation, Jun Li had decided to trust everything she read in the Glass Cloud Manual.

  She thought that surely, it would know better than her, who only had fragmented memories of a different Cultivation system. ‘Who the hell came up with that anyway… Using all the Qi in your body for… anything is ridiculous, even if it's theoretically efficient.’

  Jun Li ran her hands through her hair, groaning in abject frustration. ‘I’m not going to hesitate anymore, if I see something even the slightest bit suspicious in one of these Techniques or Cultivation Methods, I’m going to change it.’

  Jun Li fell back and faced the sky, physically energized from her breakthrough, yet mentally drained from her grievances.

  ‘It’s not like any changes I make will be more likely to kill me than that damn Cultivation Method…’ Jun Li continued to grumble to herself as she brainstormed ways to improve her Cultivation method.